It is easy to comprehend Aziz's anxiety to seem more Mujahideen than the Mujahideens at that juncture. He was, after all, shortly to head for home and face the very public demonstrations of anger against the Nawaz Sharif government's undertaking to withdraw from the LoC that the Washington joint statement had enjoined on it.

Aziz's main burden during the course of theinterview was to prove that it was India that was to blame for everything that happened in Kargil -- it was India that had over-reacted to the presence of a few Mujahideen there, it was India that had repeatedly breached the LoC, it was India that had expansionist ambitions. Even this, very manifest, anti-India stance is understandable, given Aziz's job description.

But as the foreign minister of a sovereign democratic state, or one that calls itself that, Aziz must know that international credibility cannot be built on half-truths and total falsehoods. On the one hand, he breezily states that the ``freedom fighters'' have a right to ``be there'', on the other, he assures everyone that ``we will use our influence with the freedom fighters''. He follows this up with the philosophical observation that there is the distinct possibility that ``the freedom fighters may refuse to respond to our persuasion''.

By the end of that session with Sebastian, Aziz had threatened the possibility of ``ten Kargils'';pretended that the LoC was not a properly delineated boundary on the ground; and refused to recognise that there was a time-frame for the withdrawal from Kargil. So what is the world to make of this clutter of observations? Very little, apart from concluding that here indeed is a very slippery customer.

It is this tendency to speak in forked tongues that has jeopardised the Lahore Declaration, which was the closest in two decades that India and Pakistan had come to for ushering in an era of peace in the region. Now that Aziz and his Prime Minister are back in Islamabad, they may find it useful to refer once again to that statement issued on Sunday in Washington.

Among other things it states clearly that the current fighting in the Kargil region is ``dangerous and contains the seeds of a wider conflict'' and that ``concrete steps will be taken for the restoration of the line of control in accordance with the Simla Agreement''. It also recognises that ``the bilateral dialogue begun in Lahore in Februaryprovides the best forum for resolving all issues dividing India and Pakistan, including Kashmir''.

Sartaj Aziz may also be gently reminded that it was Pakistan that had signed this document, not India. Therefore, the quicker it keeps the promises made therein, the better.